The Importance of Government in Society Argumentative Esasay

Government is something that we need to help govern ourselves, and in human society, we need something to tell us from right, and wrong, because in nature we are inherently evil, and without any regulation, we will destroy ourselves. 

To start off, it is very hard for us to work together to solve a problem, this being known as the collective action problem (Mansbridge), we need a government to help this, although we still deal with this problem with a government, for example, voting. It’s something we should all do for the better good, but not everyone does it. However, the government helps with the collective action problem with things like paying taxes. We hate doing it, but paying taxes helps all of us if we all chip in, with getting things like new roads, public schooling, etc. Without any government and regulations, no one would chip in, because we are all inherently selfish, and wanna keep the money to ourselves. 

If we lived in a world with no government or state, the world would be in chaos. We would need to rely on each other, which would be all in all difficult because we only want to help ourselves. As stated in Mansbridge “First, political science as a discipline has a mandate to help human beings govern themselves.” (Mansbridge 8). This quote explains how we can not discipline ourselves, and we need politics to help govern us. On another note, if we live in a state of nature, we would live in constant competition with each other, and always be in a state of war. Hobbes explains this well by saying “Irrational human passions to be the source of conflict” (Hobbes 5). Meaning that our own selfish desires will lead us to fight with ourselves. Although people argue that all government is oppressive, no government would lead to constant mayhem. Yes, government is oppressive, and will always favor people in power with things like coercion, but without it, there would be no regulations, and people will always fend for themselves. 

The idea of us being able to live without a government, and peacefully on our own would be impossible. This utopian idea is represented in media for example in the movie “Star Trek”. We see how the Baku people live happily, and in order without any form of government. This is an idea of a good state of nature, but realistically we would not be able to live like that. An example of what would happen if we lived with no government would be the movie “The Purge”. People living with no rules or laws, and how they are incomplete chaos where everyone is being violent, and there’s no control because inherently we are evil. The idea of having rules,  rewards, and punishment, helps us not be at each other’s throats, which government helps regulate, without government we would have no self-control. Furthermore, having no government, and living peacefully, with everyone helping each other sounds good, but will never be executed because it can never be reached. 

In addition, people are scared and want a leader, even if it’s bad. A bad government will always be better than no government (Amy L. Atchison & Shauna Shames). This is because we are unable to govern ourselves, and it will be every man for themselves. We are unable to corporate together. 

All in all, we need a government to help us from killing each other over our own selfishness. We need set rules to help regulate ourselves, even if they are unfair. We are unable to care about anything but ourselves, no matter how high you think your morals are, in a state in which you want to survive, you will always be selfish, even if it could help everyone’s happiness.